Axes
by Wild Iris
Summary: Drabbles along the intersection of Wesley and Lilah.
1. Axis

Standard disclaimer: the _Angel_ universe and its characters belong to Mutant Enemy and Fox. No money made, no disrespect intended.

**Axis**

"We sent her." Her hand has been deciphering Faith's signature, and the warmth or the frailty or the sleepy hour has bounced this admission out of her.

When he shrugs, and does not comment, she follows it up by saying, "She was supposed to kill Angel."

"Well, yes." Now he looks at her. "A vampire slayer. Obviously."

And because she hasn't exposed herself enough, or because she's still clumsy at the language of subtext, Lilah adds: "I still wish she had killed him."

"I know." Carefully, he touches her hand over his ribs. He knows what she has done. It is the only pact they have.


	2. Recte

**Recte**

_Price [sic] was contacted by Ms Morgan in the interest of the firm. Unfortunately, Ms Morgan's approaches proved unsuccessful._

Linwood really had lacked thoroughness, Lilah thought, keying through the file. As well as instincts. His report came to an end way back at the beginning of the summer. With a receipt for one Aldine edition of the _Inferno_ and a note to the effect of 'project closed'.

Plotting an amended version, she smiled at his final remarks: _unreceptive to the offer made by Wolfram & Hart… if I might respectfully suggest, of small significance… and of no further interest [sic]._


	3. Definition

**Definition**

Not a job; a definition. No line between work and not-work. Not-work was the white apartment where girls threw lamps at her head and Angel threatened from the doorway, the wine bars at twenty bucks a glass where clients and their rivals came to bend her ear.

Strange, then, that she'd wandered into places where she sometimes had to remind herself that she was working. A bridge formed by the intersection of two streets. A watering-hole that no client would have chosen. A grey apartment into which the vampire could walk at any moment, yet into which he never did.


	4. Act IV

Note: written for the prompt, 'Something wicked this way comes' (_Macbeth_).

**Act IV**

Still he does not understand why Lady Macbeth, the manipulator, breaks first. Lilah would not do it. She kills her boss, discovers his deception; it only makes her fiercer under him.

And the way the most unlikely prophecy proves itself for good – how could he understand that?

But the pricking of the thumbs – that he understands. It is what he feels along his skin before she touches him, so that he knows whenever she is near and his body echoes in anticipation. It is how like things recognise each other, in the dark, after the heath is blasted.


	5. Weakness

**Weakness**

He's one of those people that seem more robust without their clothes. Tailoring emphasised the slim shoulders; its absence revealed muscles unobtrusively defined. From the first night, when he'd seized her throat, she'd known that he was stronger than he looked. Stronger than she'd thought.

Or perhaps he simply upset whatever thinking on strength and weakness she'd absorbed from college hazings and the gladiator contest that was work. As for example: when she looked down at their entangled hands, and could tell only from the polish which was hers and which was his, she might once have found it funny.


	6. Fire by Fire

**Fire by Fire**

It was too remote to be expected. Sometime, yes; but not in this life, not contrary to the plan.

She has misread the signs entirely, and now she can only watch. The blazing shafts have taken over the world, sending lofty walls tumbling into the street, burning through metal and paper and stone.

The day of reckoning has come just when it could be in no one's interest.

Staff throughout the building, fearful of the wrath of the Senior Partners, beseech whatever gods will have them that the city not be destroyed.

Hitting redial on her cellphone, Lilah prays too.


	7. Gently

Note: written for the prompt 'Once Upon a Time'. Quotes from _The Princess Bride_.

**Gently**

They've watched this movie before. She teases him by imitating Ms Wright Penn's most amorous dialogue as he tries to talk about post-modern fairytales and the medieval romance.

He chuckles and she moves, obscuring the torture scene as she pivots into his lap and rains down girlish kisses ('Oh Westley, Wesley, darling') –

– and leans deeper and deeper and finally stops listening as one villain is slain and the other is allowed to live and go free, because in the end _he scooped her up just like in the books_ and they'll most likely be killed in the morning.


	8. Eros and Psyche

**Eros and Psyche**

In July, he remembers the story of Psyche. How she was taken always in the dark, never to know her unseen lover from a deformed and outcast thing. How she believed that she was cursed by jealous gods, and how nonetheless she found that she could want the creature, because he was warm and he spoke softly when he came to her. Want him enough to risk their ire again and see his face.

In August, he swallows in the hot night and lays his hand on Lilah's shoulder, stilling her movements. Reaches around her to turn on the light.


	9. Design

**Design**

"I can see that you were going for a… gray aesthetic," she says.

"My grey," he says. "Not yours."

"We're different shades of gray, now? I hope that you're not getting metaphysical on me. Because I can bat that right back."

"G-r-e-y. It's a soothing neutral. G-r-a-y is the colour of polluted skies and operating tables."

Lilah halts and crosses her arms over her breasts, clearly knowing the effect of the neutral walls behind her skin. "My decor is white."

"Amazing." He holds out a hand.

"With red accents."

"Same here," he says, as she tumbles on to the sheet.


	10. Day to Evening

**Day to Evening**

The office dress code wasn't easy to fulfil. Outfits had to be sartorially faultless, dressy enough to carry over to a dinner meeting and appropriate to continue wearing after you were dead.

Fortunately, Lilah had done work for Chanel. True, it sucked that she was going to die without a jacket, and the shoes weren't much good for running, but the sweater gave warmth in the sewers and the stockings held up remarkably well.

When Angelus mocked her looks, she didn't flinch. She knew that she'd chosen the costume she would wear for eternity with greater foresight than he had.


	11. Alba

**Alba**

In the vampire bite, hardened by the moon, he sees that she is there because some need can make her clutch at any willing body. But within the hour, the white turns grey; and in the maze of shadows on her face, the convictions held at night appear for what they are, simplified. And her hands have crept under the pillow, or up toward her breast.

As the moon fades to translucency, the slow dawn comes to light the towers of the city: smog-wreathed, foreign, momentarily clear.

— It's morning?

Lilah blinks, sounding surprised that she has slept all night.

— Yes.


	12. Over and Under

**Over and Under**

— It shouldn't be hard to restrain if it becomes violent. They're terrified of the figure eight, so simply bind it with a reef knot –

Wes demonstrates something he must have learned in his squeaky-clean childhood. The string likes it. — So that's the knot for restraining behemoths, she purrs. What about tying one's lover to the bedpost?

He doesn't even blink. — A mooring hitch, I'd imagine.

The next day, after security has removed her client, Lilah contemplates the lines around her wrist. Probably the closest she'll get to knowing how a ship feels safe in harbour. It's not a bad feeling.


	13. Glossy

**Glossy**

When she sees the magazine at the checkout, promising _Your Sexual Problems Solved_, Lilah almost doesn't mock it. The smaller print, though, proves her right. _Become 100% Orgasmic_. _Break out of the Familiar_. She doesn't have problems like that.

Now, _How to Pleasure Your Man to the Degree that He Ceases to be Attuned to Your Leading Questions_. Or, _Ten Ways to Know When Your Lover Hides Another Woman in his Bedroom_. Those might tempt her. Possibly.

Taking some chocolate from the neighbouring rack, she's glad for the moment that both the self-help industry and the Senior Partners leave some things to personal initiative.


	14. Sangfroid

**Sang-froid**

It came like an ocean into his mouth. Bronze, adrenaline, post-coital rush; swallowed through an edge of salt. And _her_ ground into the skin like cinnamon, the memory of a taste enjoyed reluctantly before.

Predator knows prey as the tongue knows sweet and bitter. Even Angel must have recognised the wealth of matter given over to him: the tang of fear, the surge and hesitation of desire; the purpose, the weariness, the weaknesses.

It lingered on this body's palate. He has all of it now: a man in a pint of blood, richer than the scroungings of a thousand libraries.


	15. Taxis

**Taxis**

It's a simple language, Lilah's probing for answers; transparent after what he's known. He unpicks its structure and shows her.

They talk around what's left: instinctive signs, at first.

Conversations occlude more. She becomes Latin; everything is in the inflection. Someone who would read it might recover the meaning of a text dismembered long ago.

Or they might be speaking German, not pointing the sentence until it's almost over.

And there's one moment, for which there is no predicate, when she is golden Greek unrolling in his hands.

It's only when she tries English that he can't listen any more.


	16. Her Fingers

**Her Fingers**

Ran like fire up and down a piano, back when her mom would listen to her play.

Kept writing all through finals: nine papers, nine distinctions.

Went twice weekly for the best French manicure.

Made flesh beg like a slave and then dismissed it with a snap.

Held a mascara wand, a pen, a cellphone; the weapons that no one controlled.

Sent the boss who threatened her straight on the elevator into Hell.

Curled around a lock of hair without her meaning it.

Tore drawing the bolt on the last grating in the sewer.

Won't cover such a little wound.


End file.
